I am a woodworker and writer exploring and honing both crafts through this blog. Follow along as I discover myself in words and sawdust, moving along the path towards finding the methods of work that are best for me.

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Sunday, July 10, 2016

...Within Given Bounds

"The art of pattern design consists not in spreading yourself over a wide field, but expressing yourself within given bounds.

The very strictness of such bounds is a challenge to invention. In the realm of applied design manufacture is an autocrat, and the machine is taskmaster. Let who CAN rebel against their authority. For those who cannot - and they are the great majority - revolt is futile. We are all of us, artists no less than the rest of the world, dependant upon manufacture; and those of the title who stand aloof from it give grounds for the accusation, commonly brought against artists, of being at best unpractical and wrong headed. Their sense of fairness is at fault, too, in blaming manufacture because it falls short of art, while they stand by and refuse a helping hand to the makers of things which will be made, and must be made, and made by machinery too, whether they like it or whether they do not. It rests with those who have some facility of design (their name is not legion) to come to the aid of manufacture, which, without the help from art, is given over to the ugliness which they deplore."